November 18, 2010

"Thomson Reuters to acquire LPO firm Pangea3"

In yet another consolidation exercise, financial news and business information provider Thomson Reuters is all set to acquire legal process outsourcing firm Pangea3. The deal is expected to be formally announced in the next one or two days, said sources. The total deal value could be in the range of $35-40 million (around Rs 157-200 crore).

This is the second acquisition by Thomson Reuters in India. Pangea3, founded by David Perla and Sanjay Kamlani, has private equity investment from The Glenrock Group and Sequoia Capital. The company is expected to have an annual revenue of $25-30 million.

“Pangea3 will be making an official statement to its employees tomorrow,” said a source close to the deal. The Glenrock Group had led an invested of $4 million in 2006 and Sequoia Capital invested $7 million in 2007.

When contacted, Sanjay Kamlani, the co-CEO of Pangea3 said: “Every second month there is speculation that either we are acquiring some company or someone else is acquiring us. We have never commented on such speculation and I will not comment on this news either.”

Pangea3, which has over 650 employees, offers services like patent analytics and patent prosecution services, legal research, business and competitive intelligence services, commercial contracting and licensing services among others.

For Thomson Reuters, the acquisition fits into its legal services offering. Other than the financial news and business information services, the firm also has a presence in the healthcare and science, legal and tax and accounting segments. This acquisition will fit into the Thomson Reuters legal business unit, which has a revenue of $3.6 billion and has 14,300 legal experts globally.

When contacted, Thomson Reuters said: “We do no comment on merger and acquisition activity.” Meanwhile, Tarun Anand, Managing Director and Senior Company Officer, South Asia, said the company was looking at the inorganic growth route in India. “We have earlier acquired Indlaw Communications. So the inorganic route is clearly an opportunity for us. We would look at acquiring in the legal space as well as in the healthcare and science space,” said Anand at a press conference held on the launch of its new financial desktop platform.

Thomson Reuters has about 8,400 employees in India. At present, in India almost 90 per cent of the firm’s business comes from its financial and business information segment.

The LPO segment is one of the fastest growing sub-sectors in the knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) domain. Revenue growth between 2010 and 2015 is expected to be approximately 26 per cent annually. Currently, there are over 5,200 professionals in the LPO industry in India and the Philippines, contributing an annual revenue of approximately $300 million (around Rs 1,362 crore), and this is expected to reach 18,000 professionals with an annual revenue of $960 million (around Rs 4,320 crore) by December 2015, said a report by Evalueserve.

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